Not only was it a pin in the rear to change your windows, you now have more window to clean:wink:

Clean Fuels AZ has spent millions of dollars over the past 5 years just on getting the permits to build a new refinery and despite their complying with all of the rules and regulations, the econazis are threatening them with a myriad of lawsuits to keep them from actually building anything. Why are gas prices so high? Ask the econazis. The ridiculous rules and regulations that they have insisted on having has caused a number of smaller independent refineries to go out of business. Competition drives prices down. The Econazis don’t care what impact they may have on any person, as long as they save a toad. That is as long as they don’t have a wind park put in the view of their house.

The permit process to build a new refinery is ridiculously complicated, Clean Fuel AZ has been working on getting a permit for over 5 years and millions of dollars. They haven’t even broken ground yet. The environazi groups are still threatening lawsuits and the Envirocrats in the EPA are throwing up roadblock after roadblock even after all of the originally required tests and permits have been done. Peejz, the oil companies are more than willing to build them without subsidies, however they have to be allowed to do so. That is what is NOT happening at the moment. BTW with the length of time involved in getting the various permits approved, The standards can actually change during the permit cycle.

Why do you think they haven’t built a refinery in almost 30 years and have closed a lot of the smaller ones because the cost of operating them and trying to bring them up to new environmental codes were simply too high. Recently an economist stated that the return on investment in oil stocks was actually lower than the S&P 500 average by almost 50%. If the oil companies and investors are getting so rich, why are the oil companies underperforming in comparison to the remainder of the private business sector? Would not investors put their money where it would bring them the most return? Where would you put your money, an investment returning 5% or one returning 10%?

As for repairing the ones damaged by the two hurricanes, should we invest the money in companies that will create jobs for taxpayers, or should we simply hand the money out to the taxpayers while leaving them unemployed? Money invested in industrial projects circulates through the economy multiple times, money spent on social programs generates little economic return.

The problem is that many perfectly intelligent people like Peejz are being so inundated with socialist BS that it can become dificult to determine some of the more subtle facts like without profit, there is no investment. I understand that yes the oil companies make billions each year, but when it’s only a 5% return on their investment, they’re not good investments. If they didn’t make billions, they have no investors and would go out of business.

Is there any business man out there who is going to tell his stock holders “We’re going to spend BILLIONS to improve efficiency at this facility by ten percent. I Know it’s a lot of money and will take us 10 years to recoup the cost of the emissions retrofit, but then we’ll be making some profits then.” ? Why do the eco freaks think that every corporation has endlessly deep pockets? It’s just not the case. Believe it or not people work for these companies to get paid, and that includes the investors who expect to make money (i.e. PROFIT) from their investments.

As for hybrid and other technology cars, they’re a great idea. Unfortunately the technology simply isn’t advanced enough to be workable on the scale of the current gasoline engine. It simply needs to be developed more to bring the cost down to the point of affordability. Currently the price difference between a hybrid and a non hybrid model of the same vehicle is just cost prohibitive. There is a demand for the vehicles. This is evidenced by the fact that no manufacturer of hybrid vehicles can keep up with demand. Another technology that needs to be explored is the Northstar engine technology. It’s far easier to put into a gasoline engine than a hybrid configuration. For those who don’t know what the Cadillac Northstar engine does, let me explain. Vehicles only need a lot of torque and horsepower while accelerating. Once they achieve the desired speed, their horsepower and torque needs drop considerably. Basically it’s Newton’s law. A body in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by outside forces. Hence once the vehicles gets going as long as the engine produces enough power to overcome drag and a small amount of gravity. The way that the Northstar V8 engines work is that once the car gets up to speed, the Northstar computer reduces the number of cylinders that are firing to the lowest number necessary to maintain that speed. Going down a flat highway, the V8 may actually only be using 4 cylinders because it takes less than 100 horsepower to maintain speed. On a slight grade, it might start firing 2 more cylinders so that it would increase the horsepower to over 200 bhp to compensate for the grade. On a steep hill, all 8 cylinders would come online and give the vehicle a full 300+ horsepower to overcome the increase power requirement of the hill. If most vehicles were equipped with v6s or v8s set up this way, the fuel economy would be incredible. My truck has the largest, most fuel economical 4 cylinder on the market, but I know that if I load it very heavily, I will get worse fuel economy than a friend’s similarly sized v8. If it were available with a Northstar equipped v6, I would get better economy in all situations. Personally if I had had the extra $10,000 to spend I would’ve loved the new Hybrid Silverado. However increasing my vehicle purchase price by 50% would’ve made it unaffordable.

Basically while the call for more fuel efficient vehicles is admirable, the facts are that we have to deal with our current situation first and let the technology develop accordingly. That takes time and since noone wants to walk miles carrying groceries in a backpack on a routine basis, let’s build the refineries and upgrade the power plants to handle the need in the interim.

Instead of oil refineries and billions in tax incentives for oil drilling, why not fund diesel hybrid cars?

Such vehicles could end foreign oil dependency, salvage the American auto industry, and save America as much as a trillion dollars (more on this angle)

Technology can enable America to move beyond oil, especially foreign oil. Isn’t it about time?

Chad Snyder